Power cables are routed to a variety of locations such as businesses, dwelling units, buildings, government centers, etc. to provide electric power. The use of hybrid cables that connect optical fiber to these locations along the power cable line has been found to be advantageous. For example, the optical fiber or fibers could be used to transmit data signals related to power network situation and/or could be used to provide data related services to those locations.
Power cables tend to have large cross sections resulting in practical weight and size limitations for spooling of the power cables. Accordingly, in many power installation situations, multiple power cable segments are spliced together at splice points to complete the routing instead of laying one large power cable. At a typical splice point, conductors and shielding of the power cable segments are electrically connected together. When power and optical fiber hybrid cables are used, fiber splices are needed in such splicing locations. Such optical fiber splicing creates difficulties and wastes for the power cable splicing operation.
The cost of providing/manufacturing the optical fibers is usually a small fraction of the cost of providing/manufacturing the power cable. If any of the optical fibers in a hybrid cable are damaged, the repair or replacement of all or part of the power cable portion of the hybrid cable is significantly greater than the repair or replacement of all or part of the fiber portion of the hybrid cable.
Therefore, it is desirable to provide an integrated fiber/power cable technical solution to address the cable splicing issue and optical fiber repair/replacement issue.